ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a central question raised by post-Cold War demands for statehood in Central and Southeastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Horn of Africa, South and Southeast Asia and the South Pacific: who qualifies as sovereign, independent state? It contends that for the past two hundred years the criteria for acknowledgment of new states have been tied to the idea of self-determination of peoples. Two variants of the idea have underpinned the international practice throughout most of this period -- self-determination as a negative right and as a positive right. The post-1950s right of self-determination delegitimised the hitherto legitimate unilateral secession. The key question for international relations and law is whether to persist in the denial of legitimacy of unilateral secession by protecting the territorial integrity of existing states from within. The Jeffersonian notion of habitual obedience of a new authority is an observable phenomenon.
